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Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

John Maynard Keynes

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Average Believe Discover Interest Opinion
Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Case Decision Reality Reason
By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Citizenship Important Inflation Process Secret
It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Believe Economics Fools Temporary
If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Calculation Human Nature Result Temptation
The numeric system was invented to help man to put order in the chaos of the world.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Chaos Help Invention Man System World
The principle objectives in life are love, the creation and enjoyment if aesthetic experience, the pursuit of knowledge. Love comes a long way first.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Experience Knowledge Life Love Objective Principle
Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis , and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Accident Achievement Economist Immortal Writing
It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Foolish Greatness Possible Progress
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Fair God Oneself Pretend Soul
The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Drive Profit Thrift
It is Enterprise which build and improves the world’s possessions. If Enterprise is afoot, Wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, Wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Build Enterprise Improve Possession Sleep Thrift Wealth World
The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Envelope Future Ignorance Object Ourselves Skills Social
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Behavior Creation Economics Head Heart Problem Religion
Gold is a relic from a time when government’s were less trustworthy in these matters (currency debasement) than they are now.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Currency Gold Government Time Trust
Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

Argument Balance Budget Defeat Fruit Object Strange

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

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Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

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